


Sunday

by SkipandDi (ladyflowdi)



Series: Moments from the Infiltrate Universe [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Religious Fanaticism, christian - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/SkipandDi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the long, sad history of John’s epically bad ideas, deciding to take his son to meet his grandmum is right up there with coming face to face with the man who blew his shoulder out through his back. It would be, John suspected, just as painful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the first vignettes Skip and I wrote after we finished the Infiltrate series. PLEASE heed the following warnings: this fic portrays a really bad mother/child relationship, and blatant homophobia with Christian overtones. If that in any way is a trigger for you, please do not read this fic.

“I have to see her,” John says.

Sherlock pretends not to hear him, using his phone with a single-minded intensity that would have convinced anyone else he was utterly focused on his work, and not simply attempting to ignore one of John’s many stupid ideas.

John, however, isn’t fooled. “He’s her first grandchild,” he says, packing things into Andrew’s bag with unconscious precision. He's completely unaware of how appealing Sherlock has found him the entire day -- hair rucked up, cornflower blue jumper over jeans, the tails of his button-down pulled out almost absently, as if he’s forgotten to tuck it in with his usual military precision. He's been so distracted lately he hasn't noticed the deliberate absence of some of his more offensive attire, and Sherlock has verbally thanked Andrew several times already for his hard work playing the decoy on that front. 

Sherlock scowls, looks up from his phone. “Since when does that mean she deserves unhindered access to either of you?”

John pauses and looks down at their son -- asleep in his carrier -- with an odd look on his face, almost like he’s embarrassed. Of what, Sherlock’s not sure. It’s certainly not his fault his mother is emotionally deficient, and though that seems like the most likely cause of his distress it doesn't make sense given he already knows Sherlock’s assessment of the situation. Sherlock finds John’s embarrassment unexpected, and inexplicable.

“I’m not saying we start inviting her over for Sunday dinner, Sherlock. But she should see him, at least once.”

“She’s not going,” Sherlock says, and goes back to the phone. 

He hears John blow out a exasperated breath. “And what are you talking about?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” There are times when John’s willful ignorance is amusing, charming even. Then there are other times. “My mother would _do_ something to her, and that would rather ruin the entire christening for you, wouldn’t it?”

“Fine,” John says, frustrated but undeterred. “We’ll see my mother for dinner one night, she can -- no, she can’t come here, we’ll go to her house.”

Sherlock looks up, almost disbelieving at the self-delusion present in this conversation. It’s enormous enough to be its own person. “Why do you want to do this? What exactly do you think is going to happen? That she’ll be _happy_ you showed up with your husband and the son your lesbian sister carried for you?”

“Sherlock shut up, okay, just shut up. We’re going, I don't want to hear any more about it.” John turns away sharply, walks into the other room to make the phone call. Sherlock watches him go, eyes narrowed. Andrew’s quiet burble grabs his attention, and he turns to see his son blinking calmly, hands in little fists, waving without purpose.

“Don’t worry,” he tells Andrew. “I won’t let her damage your development by scarring you this early in life.” 

Andrew mouth purses into a tiny mew, and Sherlock takes it as a wordless agreement.

As further evidence of John’s insanity he schedules their visit later the same week -- ostensibly to get it over with, more likely because he’s trying to prove something to himself, and his mother, and Sherlock as well. They bundle Andrew up and get in the car John had insisted on keeping, and head out of the city -- Andrew asleep, Sherlock resentful and annoyed, and John on edge the whole way.

“It might not be that bad,” John blurts out, though who he’s trying to convince Sherlock’s not sure. “She might just slam the door in my face and then we can all go home.”

Sherlock glances at him sideways. “Do you know there's a strong body of evidence to suggest that even very young infants can remember events over the so-called ‘infantile-amnesia period’?” John smiles, and Sherlock looks at him fully. “What?”

“Looked that up, did you?”

“Obviously, what’s your point?”

“It’s just -- nice. Good.”

And Sherlock can see he means it, is genuinely pleased. “He’s my son.”

John laughs. “You say that like he’s a thing you can own.”

“I treat you the same way, you don't have a problem with that.” Sherlock glances in the back, where Andrew is sleeping peacefully. “You’re mine, and he’s mine -- and frankly I don’t know why you can’t seem to grasp the extent to which it bothers me when people mistreat what I've very clearly staked as my own.”

He looks back to John, who is smiling at him like he can’t help it, eyes brilliantly blue in the mid-afternoon sun.

 

.

John knows that this is a bad idea.

He’d known it while packing Andrew’s afternoon bag, and he’d known it while belting him into his car seat, and he’d known it when he’d had to ask Sherlock not once, not twice, but _four_ times to get out of his bathrobe and into the clothes John had left out on the bed.

In fact, in the long, sad history of John’s epically bad ideas, deciding to take his son to meet his grandmum is right up there with coming face to face with the man who blew his shoulder out through his back. It would be, John suspected, just as painful.

“John, I fear that a break of unimaginable magnitude has happened to my mind, because for once in as long as I can remember I find myself completely at a loss. Please, for my own sanity – explain to me why exactly we’re doing this.”

Honestly, John didn’t have an answer for him, not at Baker Street, not when Sherlock had finally oozed into the car with a flop of limbs, and not when they started out towards Oxford. Before it had been different, but now… now there’s Andrew, and John just wants, desperately, to share him with his mother, to open up a line of communication between them that hasn’t existed for many long years. He wants his mother to love Andrew like she never loved him, and to be proud of the beautiful thing that had been brought into the world solely out of love. He recognizes how wanting that as badly as he does is pathetic, but he can’t make himself stop. The thought has taken root – for the life of him he can’t shake it.

It’s an hour and a half trip out of London. John’s village is right outside Oxford, a comfortable country spot where the people never left – lived and died as their fathers had before them, and their fathers before them. It’s different from Ascot, from the fields of horses and wildflowers. Wheatley is rolling hills and thick, lush forests in one direction and barley and wheat fields for as far as the eye can see in the other. He remembers all to well the anxiety he’d felt as a young man, the inexplicable and yet undeniable need to _get out_ , away from the expectations, away from his splintered family. The dichotomy of the situation he’s once again putting himself in isn’t lost on him.

Three rights, a left, and then down the road and they’ve arrived. He brings the car to a stop, turns off the ignition. The willow tree in his mother’s garden moves gently in the breeze, brushing the fence along the side of the house. When John was a lad he remembers thinking that the tree was whispering to him, telling him all its secrets.

John glances over at Sherlock, only to find those lovely green eyes already on him. “Well, here we are,” he says unnecessarily; he can’t quite move himself to get out of the car.

“John,” Sherlock says. “This is a mistake.”

“The way you keep saying that isn’t making me feel any better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” Sherlock replies. “This is a mistake and you know it.” He takes the sting out of the words by grabbing John’s hand, squeezing tight. “You will inevitably find yourself disappointed. Nothing good is going to come from this.”

Sometimes, it’s like Sherlock can read this mind. “You have visions of the future in your bag of tricks?”

“Supernatural powers are wholly unnecessary when it comes to your deeply unpleasant mother.” He brushes his fingertip down John’s wrist, over his pulse. “I know what you’re attempting to do, but surely you see how futile it is?”

“It might work.”

“It won’t,” Sherlock answers firmly.

“You can’t know that,” John says. He can hear the note of desperation in his own voice. “You’ve only met her once.”

“John—”

“It’s too late now anyway. She’s seen us through the window,” John says, and opens the car door.

 

.

His mother doesn’t slam the door in his face, as he’d half expected. She does one better.

There were many reasons John spent his childhood not only confused but bitter and angry, so bitter and angry that he’d had no choice but to join the military to get away from it. One of those reasons is John’s mother. The other is his Aunt Rose.

Somehow, in the years that he’s been away, she’s gotten worse – fatter and angrier and meaner, all under the glossy, high maintenance look of 1973. John can see it all over her face because he knows her, only all too well.

She takes a long look at him, sizing him up from beneath her heavy jowls. That piercing gaze will always make him feel like a ten year old boy, John thinks, right up until the day she finally dies -- he feels guilty already and he has no idea what he did. “Aunt Rose,” he says, proud of himself when his voice doesn’t shake. 

“Johnny,” she replies. Her eyes travel over Sherlock with a disinterested glance. She doesn’t look at the baby. “Your mum went across the street for some sugar, she’ll be back in a moment.”

She doesn’t invite them in. John had expected that, just as he expected the way she grasped the heavy cross around her throat with one hand. 

He feels embarrassment burn through him, and a hot flash of anger -- all too familiar. For the first time, he realizes having a child can be a disadvantage. Just the two of them and they could have run back to the car and been halfway back to London; instead they have Andrew, and Andrew’s car seat, and Andrew’s nappy bag, and the whole business of getting him buckled into the car again properly. It’s a sheer impossibility, getting back to the car before his mum comes back from Ms. Barnhart’s, and yet John has to stop himself from doing exactly that.

He doesn’t look at Sherlock.

They stand there for a small eternity, silent, with only the rustling leaves for company. The garden’s gotten a bit tall, a bit overgrown, and John wonders who is cutting it for her, or if she’s doing it. He spent many hot summers going over and over that grass with the push mower until it was just right. His mother beat him with a switch from the willow tree when it wasn’t.

He sees her, then, finally, coming across the road with a small cup. It’s from the tea set she and Dad bought when they were just married -- not a single one has escaped time unscathed, not even the sugar bowl, which has a chip in one corner. Harry put it there, when she threw it across the room.

There is no pleasure in his mother’s face when she sees him, but a sort of weariness, as if she would rather be anywhere but here -- as if running across the road to Ms. Barnhart’s had been her way of running back to London. 

She climbs the steps to the porch and John is absurdly thankful that Sherlock is keeping his piece, that he is a rock against his back on which he can rely. “Hello mother,” he says.

“John,” she replies, and looks over his face, as if studying him -- as if reading him down to his soul. Sherlock does it all the time, but it’s always out of love, out of concern. John isn’t sure what his mother sees. “You’ve brought them,” she says, a note of surprise in her voice.

“Yes,” he replies, for a moment honestly confused -- that was what he’d called and asked to do, wasn’t it? “I wanted to bring you your grandson.”

She makes a low noise, neither of assent or dissent. Like Aunt Rose, she doesn’t look at his son. “Well, come in then.”

The house looks the same, the furniture that had been a bit out of date when John was growing up now hopelessly out of fashion. His mother has doilies everywhere, and the TV set is till on the floor, and the kitchen table has the same plastic flowers that have been there since John could remember.

He’s never been more uncomfortable.

The baby makes a tiny, mewling cry – John’s gotten to know him well enough by now to know exactly what that means. “Sorry,” he tells his mother pointlessly, as Sherlock sets the carrier down and crouches to unbuckle him from his seat. “Can we…?”

His mother gives him a blank look, and Aunt Rose sniffs. They’re standing like a wall, wearing twin expressions of disapproval that make John feel like a child. But he isn’t, and hasn’t been for a very long time, and he pushes the feeling down and says, “He’s got to be changed, mother. Can we use your washroom?”

“A boy then,” she says, as if she doesn’t know, as if John hadn’t sent her an invitation for the baby shower they threw for Harry. 

“His name is Andrew,” John replies.

Sherlock stands with the baby tucked in the crook of his neck and his mother waves him off down the hall before turning to the kitchen and disappearing inside. Aunt Rose stares at the two of them for a small eternity before turning away and following her sister.

“We can leave,” Sherlock says, the moment they’re alone. His expression is entirely unreadable. “Whenever you like, we can leave.”

John closes his eyes. “Do you want to leave?”

“What I want is entirely irrelevant. This is something you are trying to prove to yourself, and as your spouse I am here to support you.” He leans in close, presses a kiss warm against the corner of John’s mouth. “We can leave. This is not your home, and hasn’t been for many long years. That you’re trying to make things better between you speaks to the quality of man you are, not to the quality of mother she is. _We can leave_ , John, whenever you like.”

He closes his eyes, swallows hard against it, the way those words lodge tight in his throat. “I love you,” he says, to Sherlock, to Andrew where he’s whimpering against Sherlock’s throat.

His mother is making tea when he enters the kitchen. He’d spent enough Christmas’s to know what his mum does when there’s company coming, and that he sees none of her usual preparations is telling. Rather than remark on it, as Harry would have inevitably done, he helps his mother pour the tea from her kettle into her tea pot, arrange the cups on her serving tray. His mother keeps sending him looks from the corner of her eye, and rearranges the cups on the serving tray, and sniffs when he takes the milk out of the ancient fridge from his boyhood.

Aunt Rose is a silent mass behind him, sucking the air out of the room. Why she came at all is hardly a mystery – he knows exactly what she’s doing here, and exactly what she’s thinking. It is an oppressive weight on his shoulders, making him feel so much smaller than he is. 

“The house looks good,” he tries. “I like the flowers you put in the front.”

“Connie Brayden’s son came and did it,” his mother says without looking at him. “He comes and visits her every week and does things for her around the house.”

John doesn’t let his hands pause. “That’s kind of him, especially to make the drive all the way from Howerton. I’m sure that she likes to see her grandchildren.”

“A boy and girl,” his mother affirms, and takes the tray to the table.

Sherlock returns with the baby in his arms, and that Andrew has chosen now to be fussy is unsurprising. Babies reacted not only to outside stimuli but to emotions, John knows, and that his son can sense the coldness in the room just as well as he can breaks his heart.

He takes Andrew from Sherlock and gently cradles him against his shoulder – sometimes, the feel of their heartbeat will calm him down. “Sorry, it was a long drive,” John says, rubbing his palm gently along Andrew’s back. His hands look enormous. 

Sherlock is not invited to sit but he does so anyway, pulling his chair closer to John’s so that it’s almost as if they’re a united front, in the face of his mother careful blankness and his aunt’s blatant disapproval. This isn’t going to end well.

“You’re looking well, Mother,” John says, in an effort to break the awkward silence.

“I had to have surgery last month,” his mother replies. 

John bites the inside of his cheek, the pang of old, familiar guilt that weighed on him like a stone. “I hope it wasn’t serious.”

“I was in the hospital for two days, I’m surprised your sister didn’t tell you,” she says airily, without looking at him. “Well? Drink your tea, then.”

Sherlock’s eyes are boring a hole through his back but John leans forward and takes a cup for himself and for Sherlock, preparing both the way they like it. His aunt watches with badly disguised revulsion, but John simply slides the cup over to Sherlock and takes a sip of his own. “I hope you’re well recovered.”

“The doctors say I’m going to have this pain in my knee for the rest of my days,” his mother replies. “With the arthritis.”

It’s an affliction that his mother has had since John can remember – the constant pain in her joints only exacerbated by the freezing winters in Wheatley. She had never once said anything about moving, and John can remember the screaming rows she’d have with his father about it. Then she’d used the excuse of not wanting her children in a new school, and it took John many long years to realize that she didn’t move because she liked something to complain about, something for which to be pitied.

“Our land lady has the same problem,” John replies. “She uses an herbal soother that she says works miracles – I can ask her to call you and tell you the brand.”

“Oh, don’t go to any trouble,” his mother says. “I’ll manage, somehow.”

The baby mewls piteously and Sherlock stands to fetch the nappy bag and the bottles inside. Out of the corner of his eye John can see his mother staring at Andrew but he doesn’t bring attention to it. Andrew’s tiny mouth is a tiny bow of unhappiness, eyes creased and wet as he starts to cry, and John hands him back over to Sherlock readily when he returns. “Can I use the microwave to heat his bottle?”

His mother waves a hand, staring back into her tea, but John can see her fighting with herself. The only thing she’d wanted, for as long as he can remember, were grandbabies, and had been the subject of many a row. When he’d joined the military she’d called him a baby killer to his face. It had been the last time they’d spoken for six years.

“How do you do it?” Aunt Rose asks.

John glances over from the microwave. “Hmm?”

“Raise a child. How do you do it? Which of you is the mother?”

The question is startling enough that John doesn’t know how to answer. “We’re both fathers to Andrew.”

“Yes, but –” She breaks off, huffs. “Who gets up to change him? Who feeds him? Who rocks him to sleep?”

Sherlock has never looked more confused, as if he can’t quite follow her line of thinking. “We both do.”

“And Harriet is not involved at all?”

John frowns, stares down at his hands as he screws the nipple back onto the bottle. “Harry is Andrew’s birth mother. She is very much in his life, but as you know she moved to New York – even so, she calls every week, and sends video messages for him, and gifts.”

“But she isn’t involved. His own mother.”

He feels like he’s shaking, but his hands are perfectly steady. “Harry loves him very much. She is Andrew’s mother, Aunt Rose, but only genetically. Andrew is my son, and he is Sherlock’s son. He is ours, and we are parents enough for him.”

What he doesn’t say is that he’d returned the gift in kind, that when Harry and Clara had left for New York Clara had been four months pregnant. It isn’t his news to tell.

“And you think that’s natural?”

John turns around, slowly. “I’m sorry?”

Rose pierces him with one sharp look. “Do you think it’s natural, what you’ve done to this poor creature?”

He goes cold, like someone slipped an ice cube down his back. His mother is staring down into her tea. “I love my son,” he says.

“Oh, I have no doubt you do,” Rose replies. She hefts her not inconsiderable girth up to her feet. “When Lillian told me you were coming I had to come and see it for my own eyes -- I could hardly believe that of her children it would be you to do this to her.”

It is suddenly very difficult to catch his breath. He’s ten years old again and his aunt is scrubbing his hands in alcohol because she’s caught him down his trousers. “I haven’t--”

“Oh yes you did,” Rose answers, clutching her cross once more. Sherlock stands as well, and Andrew is whining softly, tucked into his neck. “You thought your mother would be _happy_ to see you married to a man?”

“It shouldn’t matter, I--”

“It _does_ matter,” Rose snaps. “You were supposed to pass on your father’s line, to continue the family name. Instead you’ve given that away to another man.”

“Is that what you think?” John asks of his mother, sick, sick to the heart of himself.

His mother looks up and John, for the first time in memory, is horrified by the look on her face. It isn’t anger, or despair, but guilt. And John knows exactly what she feels guilty about. 

“I think you had quite a lot of nerve to come back here to this place, knowing how I feel about my faith,” his mother replies tiredly. She sets her napkin by her tea cup. “I wish that you had simply gotten the hint -- John, I didn’t return your marriage invitation, and I didn’t respond to your birth announcement. What could have possibly made you think I wanted you here?”

She continues, almost gently. “The profession you wanted was one thing. This lifestyle you’ve chosen is another. You’ve shamed me, and your father, god rest his soul. I don’t know what it is you came for, or why you brought the child -- did you honestly think I could love anything that had been created in your marriage? You’re living in sin, John. A marriage is between a man and a woman, and by whispering your devil’s words into your sister’s ear you’ve condemned not only her, but the product of your own desire to hell.” 

There’s a heavy silence in her wake, so loud the faucet echoes, old pipes ticking.

Someone says, “You’re wrong,” and it takes John a few seconds to realize it was _him._

His mother freezes in the doorway to the kitchen. “What did you say to me?”

“I said you’re wrong.”

She turns, eyes narrowed. “Watch your mouth, Johnny.”

“I love Sherlock. We’ve made a beautiful life for each other -- we have a business, and a home, and at one point we realized we loved each other _so much_ that we couldn’t contain it anymore, we had to give it to a child. Only we didn’t realize that there’s so much love in us for each other that it couldn’t be just one, because while Andrew is a beautiful little boy his heart could never be big enough to hold all we want to give him -- so we’ll have a second, and a third, and maybe then it’ll be enough.”

John stares at his mother across the room, and he feels as if he’s looking at a stranger. “And even if it is just Andrew, the fact that he doesn’t have a mother doesn’t mean that he won’t know, every single moment of his life, that he is absolutely, unconditionally loved.”

And then, quite abruptly, John reaches what he can take in a single day. He turns and, still clutching the warmed bottle, storms out of the room.

 

.

John strides out, his hands up slightly like he’s washed his hands of the both of them. Sherlock can’t help but think it’s not a minute too soon; his unusual tolerance for enduring situations notwithstanding, he’s really long since had enough. He holds Andrew to him with one hand, the baby occasionally making tiny noises against Sherlock’s shoulder that mean he wants to be hungry but would rather go back to sleep. Sherlock looks between the women contemptuously, automatically estimating the amount of time he has before John gets to the car.

He moves silkily, stalks up to John’s mother and stares down his nose at her. She blinks up at him in surprise, like someone waking from a dream. “You’re not worth the wasted energy so I’ll make this quick,” he tells her, voice low, sharp. “I’ve ruined lives for far, far less than what you put him through, but he’s an adult, and if he wants to let you run around with your petty, feeble-minded complaints then who am I to stop him.”

He glances over to where John’s aunt is watching him with an ugly expression; what matters is she doesn’t say anything, because Sherlock’s glare is quite certainly trumpeting the fact that he’d like to choke her with her own ignorance, twist the chain around her neck until something pops. He looks back and leans down sharply, and John’s mother takes a quick step away. “But I’m warning you right now not to underestimate what I’m willing to do to make sure you don’t bother us further. If he wants you to send cards twice a year and pretend there’s enough humanity in you to care that your grandchild -- whose name is _Andrew_ ,” he snarls, “--has turned one, or five, or twenty-two, _you will do it_ , do you understand?”

Her eyes widen, but the fight she’s been trying to hide gets away from her. “I don’t know what sort of _sick_ relationship you have with my son, but you can’t bully me--”

“This is not _bullying_ you fool, this is _forewarning_. I’m not sure if you think you were particularly subtle about what your time in the hospital was for, or where you got the money to pay for it, but rest assured the facts can and will be made public if I think it’s necessary.” Her face blanks out -- an eerily similar look to one he’s seen on John’s face before -- but not before he sees the _fear_. It’s darkly pleasing. “I may do so no matter what you agree to, because having you away from society can only be a good thing.”

She tries to rally but it’s a wilted effort. “You want me to pretend I’ve, now, suddenly accepted the inadequacy he’s shown his whole life?”

Sherlock is sharply grateful Andrew is occupying his hands. “Are you deaf as well as dumb? I don’t care if you choke on every word, in fact I quite hope that’s the case, but if he wants it _you will do it_. Are we understood?” He turns and steps to the carrier without waiting for an answer, gently laying Andrew in it and strapping him in. His son starts complaining the minute he’s sat inside but Sherlock quickly settles him, picks up the carrier and grabs the bag as well. “I also sincerely hope you test me on this, because I would be thrilled to see you spend your last few months rotting in prison.” He hears her gasp as he turns and heads towards the door.

John is sitting in the car, his hands at ten and two on the wheel, staring at the willow tree that grazes the side of the house. Sherlock opens the back door and sits Andrew inside, buckles him in with an ease John has yet to grasp no matter how many times Sherlock explains it to him. Once Andrew’s secured Sherlock shuts the door and sits in the front seat, grabs the bottle from the cup holder and reaches back to hold it in Andrew’s reach. John turns the key and puts the car in gear; no one comes to the door to watch them leave.

As they start down the road John clears his throat and opens his mouth, speaking like someone coming out of a fog. “I’m--”

“--If you finish that sentence I’ll assault you in front of our child so kindly _shut up_ ," Sherlock snaps. 

John quiets, until the only sounds are the car underneath them, tyres on the road and the rumbling engine, and the wind which blows more fiercely here than in the city. His hands are balled like fists on the wheel so tightly they’ve gone numb, and no matter what he does he can’t retreat back to the white room in his mind, colorless and formless and _safe._

They drive for some time, along a route he’d once had memorized by heart and which he can now barely recall. The last time he’d driven this path he’d still had the sting from his mother’s hand aching on his face, and his possessions in the backseat, and his enlistment papers tucked safely into the pocket of his jacket.

Now he’s soaked through with freezing cold sweat, which is the only explanation as to why he has to stop on the side of the road, before getting to the traffic circle that would take them to the A40. He doesn’t trust himself to get on the motorway, not when he’s started shaking the way he has, like all his joints have up and staged a mutiny – not with his family in the car.

Cars are driving past them, and the evening sun is starting to crest down over the sky. He waits until the shakes, so familiar to him, have stopped, until he can breathe in without it feeling like his chest is going to crack open.

He can’t meet Sherlock’s eyes. The shame is like a beast inside of him – that he put his partner, needlessly, through this, that he exposed his _child_ to this. “You were right. We shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need your apology,” Sherlock reiterates. He puts his now free hand on John’s face, his thumb over John’s temple. “I’ve got nothing on.” 

He turns his face into Sherlock’s palm. “She wasn’t always like this. My aunt, that’s a different story, but my mother… I can remember being little and holding her hand as she walked Harry and me to school. She used to sing all the time – she has a voice like a nightingale – and on Saturdays we would help her clean while my father went out on his rounds. We’d dance to the Beatles every time they came on the radio. They were her favorite.”

His throat is sore, so tight he can barely swallow around it. “When my father died he took the best of her with him. My aunt moved in with us for over a year, and everything disintegrated. Harry would escape – she was almost done with school by then, and she joined all sorts of clubs, any excuse to stay after school – but I was barely ten. Days would go by and my mum wouldn’t come out of her room. Those were the worst, hours and hours of sitting at the table doing endless revisions on my school work, of listening to my aunt’s fire-and-brimstone, but even that was better than when we had school hols and it would be the two of us, alone.”

John closes his eyes, refusing to give in to the stinging in his eyes. “I only tried to tell my mum once, but I think she blamed me for my father’s death.”

“And you followed her lead, of course,” Sherlock confirms. He doesn’t move his hand; whatever the reason, John has always seemed to find it a particularly reassuring touch. “What was the final straw?” 

His throat feels as if it’s filled with crushed glass. He swallows around the burn, can almost swear he can feel blood running down his throat. “I don’t know,” he croaks, clenching his eyes closed. “It was like I had an out of body experience. When the weather wasn’t bad I’d walk home from school. To get home I’d pass the corner shop, and the chemist, and the music shop where I got all my records, and the recruiter’s station. Every day, I took the same route every day for _years_ , until one day I didn’t just pass it, I went inside and asked them if I could enlist. I was seventeen years old, with a birthday in a week.”

He cups Sherlock’s hand, where it’s on his neck. “When my mother found out she went crazy. I packed my things and left that night.” He opens his eyes and looks up at Sherlock. “I don’t know why I needed her validation, not at this point in my life. Or maybe it isn’t validation -- I just wanted her to see that I wasn’t a failure, that I’d made a life for myself, that I had a family. I wanted--” Gold help him, it’s as if the words are clogging his throat, some unstopped well he can’t control. “Even if she couldn’t love me, at least she could love my son.”

"Did it ever occur to you she just isn't capable?" Sherlock asks, utterly calm.

"That seems obvious - I wasn't--"

"No, not you," Sherlock says, "anyone. Anyone at all. Because she isn't, and it has nothing to do with the worthiness of the candidate."

John turns slightly to look at his hands, head down like a broken thing, like a machine shut down. "So what does that mean for me, exactly?"

"It would mean you finally recognize her limitations and stop expecting more than she's capable of giving." John's still not looking at him, and it's entirely unacceptable. "You have me, and you have Andrew, and we're both more extraordinary than she could even understand, much less achieve. That's better anyway." 

He leans over so John has no choice to look at him, to face the truth of it. "I didn't think I was even capable of love until I met you, and now I'm certain I'll feel this way the rest of my life. Give me some time and I'll figure out how to make that more than enough."

The sound John makes is perilously close to a sob, even though his eyes are dry. He squeezes Sherlock’s hands in his own, presses kisses to the thick knuckles. “No, _no_ ,” he says. “Don’t – you are more than enough, you are _always_ going to be more than enough. I wouldn’t trade you, or the life we have, for _anything._ ” He reaches across the seat and pulls Sherlock in against him, hugs him as if he would be ripped away from him at any moment. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You fill me up with things I never thought I’d have.”

Sherlock makes a noise, there tucked behind John’s ear. “I should hope so, you said you’d never had another man as a sexual partner.”

For a moment he doesn’t think he’s heard right, and then bursts out laughing right there against Sherlock’s shoulder. “You are _such_ a rotten tosser, I can’t even believe it.”

Sherlock is smiling when he leans back; a smile that, for once, reaches his eyes. 

 

.

It’s Saturday evening and Sherlock is sitting in his chair, watching Andrew curiously pick through the varieties of toys laid out in front of him, when the phone rings. It's John's phone but Sherlock answers it anyway, unconcerned about who might be on the other end. "Sherlock Holmes."

There's a long pause, and then a wary voice. "I need to speak to John."

Sherlock doesn't need a single second to consider. "No."

"This is importa--"

"I don't care," Sherlock tells John's mother. "You call again and I'll have your number blocked. He wants to talk to you, he'll make that clear." He hangs up and watches as his six month old son picks up the helical baby rattle and proceeds to hit himself with it. It startles him but he continues to wave it around determinedly, making happy noises; Andrew has proven to be not only an enormous infant but a loud one.

"Who was that?" John asks, walking into the room.

Sherlock considers the effort involved in lying to him and decides it's not worth it. "Your mother."

John pauses, and then speaks with a caution that makes Sherlock wish he'd followed through on his threat and had the woman put away. "What did she want?"

"To talk to you; I told her that wasn't going to happen."

"Why?" John's not angry, but the potential is there. Well, the potential is often there, Sherlock amends. Not that this is a problem, necessarily -- John is unpredictable enough to be thoroughly entertaining, and Sherlock would quite like to keep it that way.

"Because I don't like the way she talks to you, and I'm not in a mood to respond well to it."

It’s as close to an argument as Sherlock will allow them to get concerning the matter. The tactic is a dangerous one and has angered John in the past, as he deems it far too controlling for his tastes. Sherlock doesn’t care. 

After a long moment of simply staring at one another John sits on the floor with their son, adjusting the u-cushion allowing Andrew to stay upright around his hips. He doesn’t say anything for a long while, the line of his brow drawn in thought; Sherlock has never found him more beautiful. 

“I don’t want to talk to her,” he says, after a bit. Sherlock steeples his fingers and watches him work to the natural conclusion of his thought. “She’s proven to be someone I can’t have in my life -- I can’t and won’t have her poison Andrew like that, not as he gets older.” He looks up. “But neither will you dictate to me when I speak to her.”

Wrong, Sherlock plans on keeping her as far out of their lives as is within his power, and when that is not enough, Mycroft’s. That he doesn’t say so shows, in his opinion, that he has grown as a person. “She upsets you. You are angry and sullen for at least five hours after your conversations with her, depressed for another twenty four after that. You don’t smile for at least a week.” He shifts, uncomfortable. “It... hurts me, to see you so upset. I won’t allow her to be the dark cloud over our lives.”

John’s expression has softened, just as Sherlock knew it would. “Thank you, for trying to protect me,” he replies. 

“I would do anything to protect you,” Sherlock says, confused. John must already know this, or believe it to be absolutely true.

There are several responses that go through John’s mind; Sherlock can see them scroll across his face like words on a screen, bold and vividly colored. Whatever the reason John settles on a short nod in their son’s direction, and tells Sherlock, “I would too.” 

“I know.” 

John smiles. “Come on, love,” he tells Andrew, picking him up from where he has nearly toppled over trying to grab a toy that has rolled out of his reach. He stands up and passes Andrew off to Sherlock on his way to the baby’s room, probably for another nappy going by the smell. He pauses only to kiss each of them; Andrew on the forehead, and Sherlock on the mouth, softly. Sherlock stands Andrew up in his lap and Andrew smiles at him. Sherlock is actually quite preoccupied with a case, but given the evidence suggesting a relationship between paternal mood and infant development Sherlock thinks it’s in his son’s best interest that he grin back, even when Andrew shrieks in glee and reaches a drool-covered hand out to grab at his nose.


End file.
